General Discussions

Suse Linux – ArchAngel

ArchAngel

Member

Posts: 3450
From: SV, CA, USA
Registered: 01-29-2002
well, I got a copy of Suse Linux and now I'm wondering what to do with it. haha.


so, I'd like to use it on my laptop, being, well, my computer and the only computer in the house that has a 64bit processor.(AMD, ftw)

but, I don't want to partition my harddrive and I was wondering if I could get an external harddrive and have Suse on that? would that be an issue?

oh, and any other pointers for Linux would be welcome. never used it before, although I have used Unix(solaris) a little.

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"Patience, my good citizen, patience. It's bad enough to rob a man of his dream"
-Sydney Carton, Tale of Two Cities
Soterion Studios

Lazarus

Member

Posts: 1668
From: USA
Registered: 06-06-2006
quote:
Originally posted by ArchAngel:
well, I got a copy of Suse Linux and now I'm wondering what to do with it. haha.


so, I'd like to use it on my laptop, being, well, my computer and the only computer in the house that has a 64bit processor.(AMD, ftw)

but, I don't want to partition my harddrive and I was wondering if I could get an external harddrive and have Suse on that? would that be an issue?

oh, and any other pointers for Linux would be welcome. never used it before, although I have used Unix(solaris) a little.


Install it of course.
If you put it on an external HD and use GRUB to control booting there shouldn't be any problems.

Ah, linux. What a pain it was. Took me about 2 months just to get it first installed on my laptop - because the cd drive was configured as the master drive instead of slave.

Red Hat 6 - so archaic. I had a copy of Suse 7.0 Personal Edition once though, which had a mucher better UI.

Pointer #1: if you do install GRUB or some other bootloader - put it on a floppy also if you can(if you even have one).

D-SIPL

Moderator

Posts: 1345
From: Maesteg, Wales
Registered: 07-21-2001
quote:
Originally posted by ArchAngel:
well, I got a copy of Suse Linux and now I'm wondering what to do with it. haha.


so, I'd like to use it on my laptop, being, well, my computer and the only computer in the house that has a 64bit processor.(AMD, ftw)

but, I don't want to partition my harddrive and I was wondering if I could get an external harddrive and have Suse on that? would that be an issue?

oh, and any other pointers for Linux would be welcome. never used it before, although I have used Unix(solaris) a little.


External hard drives are fine. Yast should detect it and sort out your fstab for you, if not post here and i'll give you a hand.

As for some pointers I will repeat what I have said before (sorry). Compile everything from source, yes it's long, yes it's a pain but you will be thankful later. People who use package management and pre-compiled binaries are the people who complain that their system is slow. This is because it's just a 486 binary running really fast. If you want to get the most out of that AMD64 then compile it your self.

When compiling always type (obviously omitting the > ):

>./configure --help

This will give you a long list of config options. I'll give an example of why this is important. I was compiling my IRC server (Ratbox) and when running --help i could see that the default NICK_LEN was 8. This meant that anybody connecting to my server could only have a maximum nickname length of 8 characters, which sucks. So i changed the ./configure accordingly.

./configure --NICK-LENGTH=20

Your in for an initially steep learning curve, but if you really want to know how your system works and whats going on under-the-hood then i suggest going down this root (pun intended ). It really bugs me when people try Linux and say things like "it's slow", "it doesn't work" etc etc. What it means is that they know nothing of their system and have no intention of learning either.

Good luck and welcome to the family

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"One World. One Web. One Program." -Microsoft promotional advertisement
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer!" -Adolf Hitler
"I believe in freedom... not freedom like America, freedom like a shopping cart"

ArchAngel

Member

Posts: 3450
From: SV, CA, USA
Registered: 01-29-2002
Thanks guys.
I'll probably be bumping this topic up once I get the extHD. of course, scrapping up the money for it could take a while...

------------------
"Patience, my good citizen, patience. It's bad enough to rob a man of his dream"
-Sydney Carton, Tale of Two Cities
Soterion Studios

Faith_Warrior

Member

Posts: 490
From: So.Cal.
Registered: 09-05-2006
You should test your laptop before you make an investment in hardware. There are plenty of Linux versions that simply load off a CD or DVD into memory. In my case, buying an extra hard drive for my laptop would be pointless since it just will not run anything like KDE, Gnome or even Widowmaker (lousy gateway :P ). It will run in command line very well though. The other alternative is to install Cygwin, which in some cases you can get x running KDE or what not… well if it will run it in the first place.

Cygwin is pretty cool, I was thinking that after Vista is released that I’d boot W95 from Vista and then load Cygwin to run WINE so I can play some command and conquer at true Pentium 75 speed

[This message has been edited by Faith_Warrior (edited October 15, 2006).]

ArchAngel

Member

Posts: 3450
From: SV, CA, USA
Registered: 01-29-2002
why won't an external drive run KDE?

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"Patience, my good citizen, patience. It's bad enough to rob a man of his dream"
-Sydney Carton, Tale of Two Cities
Soterion Studios

Faith_Warrior

Member

Posts: 490
From: So.Cal.
Registered: 09-05-2006
Hard drives don’t run KDE, it’s dependant on your computer if it will execute properly. The video chip on your laptop would be my main concern. If your laptop wont run KDE in the first pace than it wouldn’t matter where you place the OS files. You can place Linux anywhere, on a removable HD, on a CD or even on a piece of lettuce if your computer could read data from it, but if your laptop cant run it once in memory, than it does not matter where you store the OS. That’s why I say give it a test from a CD version of Linux if you have not done so yet on that particular laptop.
D-SIPL

Moderator

Posts: 1345
From: Maesteg, Wales
Registered: 07-21-2001
quote:
Originally posted by Faith_Warrior:
Hard drives don’t run KDE, it’s dependant on your computer if it will execute properly. The video chip on your laptop would be my main concern. If your laptop wont run KDE in the first pace than it wouldn’t matter where you place the OS files. You can place Linux anywhere, on a removable HD, on a CD or even on a piece of lettuce if your computer could read data from it, but if your laptop cant run it once in memory, than it does not matter where you store the OS. That’s why I say give it a test from a CD version of Linux if you have not done so yet on that particular laptop.


You won't get any optimisation but even a low end card will be capable of running KDE (16mb should be fine). You will need at least 32mb RAM i believe 64 would be best.

You dont have to run KDE, i would suggest using XFCE or if your adventerous use Fluxbox (my X of choice right now). Enlightenment would be worth a look as well, but updates are few and far between unfortunately.

------------------
"One World. One Web. One Program." -Microsoft promotional advertisement
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer!" -Adolf Hitler
"I believe in freedom... not freedom like America, freedom like a shopping cart"

jestermax

Member

Posts: 1064
From: Ontario, Canada
Registered: 06-21-2006
try running Suse as a Live CD/DVD (or just go and find a real Live cd like Knoppix) see if you like the distro before worrying about and Ext HD (sorry if i'm a little late on this)